Lifted Masks Part 4

A motion to adjourn immediately followed--no one wanted to do anything more that afternoon. They all wanted to say things to the Senator from Johnson; but his face had grown cold, and as they were usually afraid of him, anyhow, they kept away. All but Senator Dorman--it meant too much with him. "Do you mind my telling you," he said, tensely, "that it was as fine a thing as I have ever known a man to do?"

The Senator from Johnson moved impatiently. "You think it 'fine,'"

he asked, almost resentfully, "to be a coward?"

"Coward?" cried the other man. "Well, that's scarcely the word. It was--heroic!"

"Oh no," said Senator Harrison, and he spoke wearily, "it was a clear case of cowardice. You see," he laughed, "I was afraid it might haunt me when I am seventy."

Senator Dorman started eagerly to speak, but the other man stopped him and pa.s.sed on. He was seeing it as his const.i.tuency would see it, and it humiliated him. They would say he had not the courage of his convictions, that he was afraid of the unpopularity, that his judgment had fallen victim to the eloquence of the Senator from Maxwell.

But when he left the building and came out into the softness of the April afternoon it began to seem different. After all, it was not he alone who leaned to the softer side. There were the trees--they were permitted another chance to bud; there were the birds--they were allowed another chance to sing; there was the earth--to it was given another chance to yield. There stole over him a tranquil sense of unison with Life.

III

FOR LOVE OF THE HILLS

"Sure you're done with it?"

"Oh, yes," replied the girl, the suggestion of a smile on her face, and in her voice the suggestion of a tear. "Yes; I was just going."

But she did not go. She turned instead to the end of the alcove and sat down before a table placed by the window. Leaning her elbows upon it she looked about her through a blur of tears.

Seen through her own eyes of longing, it seemed that almost all of the people whom she could see standing before the files of the daily papers were homesick. The reading-room had been a strange study to her during those weeks spent in fruitless search for the work she wanted to do, and it had likewise proved a strange comfort. When tired and disconsolate and utterly sick at heart there was always one thing she could do--she could go down to the library and look at the paper from home. It was not that she wanted the actual news of Denver. She did not care in any vital way what the city officials were doing, what buildings were going up, or who was leaving town.

She was only indifferently interested in the fires and the murders.

She wanted the comforting companions.h.i.+p of that paper from home.

It seemed there were many to whom the papers offered that same sympathy, companions.h.i.+p, whatever it might be. More than anything else it perhaps gave to them--the searchers, drifters--a sense of anchorage. She would not soon forget the day she herself had stumbled in there and found the home paper. Chicago had given her nothing but rebuffs that day, and in desperation, just because she must go somewhere, and did not want to go back to her boarding-place, she had hunted out the city library. It was when walking listlessly about in the big reading-room it had occurred to her that perhaps she could find the paper from home; and after that when things were their worst, when her throat grew tight and her eyes dim, she could always comfort herself by saying: "After a while I'll run down and look at the paper."

But to-night it had failed her. It was not the paper from home to-night; it was just a newspaper. It did not inspire the belief that things would be better to-morrow, that it must all come right soon. It left her as she had come---heavy with the consciousness that in her purse was eleven dollars, and that that was every cent she had in the whole world.

It was hard to hold back the tears as she dwelt upon the fact that it was very little she had asked of Chicago. She had asked only a chance to do the work for which she was trained, in order that she might go to the art cla.s.ses at night. She had read in the papers of that mighty young city of the Middle West--the heart of the continent--of its brawn and its brain and its grit. She had supposed that Chicago, of all places, would appreciate what she wanted to do.

The day she drew her hard-earned one hundred dollars from the bank in Denver--how the sun had shone that day in Denver, how clear the sky had been, and how bracing the air!--she had quite taken it for granted that her future was a.s.sured. And now, after tasting for three weeks the cruelty of indifference, she looked back to those visions with a hard little smile.

She rose to go, and in so doing her eyes fell upon the queer little woman to whom she had yielded her place before the Denver paper.

Submerged as she had been in her own desolation she had given no heed to the small figure which came slipping along beside her beyond the bare thought that she was queer-looking. But as her eyes rested upon her now there was something about the woman which held her.

She was a strange little figure. An old-fas.h.i.+oned shawl was pinned tightly about her shoulders, and she was wearing a queer, rusty little bonnet. Her hair was rolled up in a small knot at the back of her head. She did not look as though she belonged in Chicago. And then, as the girl stood there looking at her, she saw the thin shoulders quiver, and after a minute the head that was wearing the rusty bonnet went down into the folds of the Denver paper.

The girl's own eyes filled, and she turned to go. It seemed she could scarcely bear her own unhappiness that day, without coming close to the heartache of another. But when she reached the end of the alcove she glanced back, and the sight of that shabby, bent figure, all alone before the Denver paper, was not to be withstood.

"I am from Colorado, too," she said softly, laying a hand upon the bent shoulders.

The woman looked up at that and took the girl's hand in both of her thin, trembling ones. It was a wan and a troubled face she lifted, and there was something about the eyes which would not seem to have been left there by tears alone.

"And do you have a pining for the mountains?" she whispered, with a timid eagerness. "Do you have a feeling that you want to see the sun go down behind them tonight and that you want to see the darkness come stealing up to the tops?"

The girl half turned away, but she pressed the woman's hand tightly in hers. "I know what you mean," she murmured.

"I wanted to see it so bad," continued the woman, tremulously, "that something just drove me here to this paper. I knowed it was here because my nephew's wife brought me here one day and we come across it. We took this paper at home for more 'an twenty years. That's why I come. 'Twas the closest I could get."

"I know what you mean," said the girl again, unsteadily.

"And it's the closest I will ever get!" sobbed the woman.

"Oh, don't say that," protested the girl, brus.h.i.+ng away her own tears, and trying to smile; "you'll go back home some day."

The woman shook her head. "And if I should," she said, "even if I should, 'twill be too late."

"But it couldn't be too late," insisted the girl. "The mountains, you know, will be there forever."

"The mountains will be there forever," repeated the woman, musingly; "yes, but not for me to see." There was a pause. "You see,"--she said it quietly--"I'm going blind."

The girl took a quick step backward, then stretched out two impulsive hands. "Oh, no, no you're not! Why--the doctors, you know, they do everything now."

The woman shook her head. "That's what I thought when I come here.

That's why I come. But I saw the biggest doctor of them all today--they all say he's the best there is--and he said right out 'twas no use to do anything. He said 'twas--hopeless."

Her voice broke on that word. "You see," she hurried on, "I wouldn't care so much, seems like I wouldn't care 't all, if I could get there first! If I could see the sun go down behind them just one night! If I could see the black shadows come slippin' over 'em just once! And then, if just one morning--just once!--I could get up and see the sunlight come a streamin'--oh, you know how it looks! You know what 'tis I want to see!"

"Yes; but why can't you? Why not? You won't go--your eyesight will last until you get back home, won't it?"

"But I can't go back home; not now."

"Why not?" demanded the girl. "Why can't you go home?"

"Why, there ain't no money, my dear," she explained, patiently.

"It's a long way off--Colorado is, and there ain't no money. Now, George--George is my brother-in-law--he got me the money to come; but you see it took it all to come here, and to pay them doctors with. And George--he ain't rich, and it pinched him hard for me to come--he says I'll have to wait until he gets money laid up again, and--well he can't tell just when 't will be. He'll send it soon as he gets it," she hastened to add.

"But what are you going to do in the meantime? It would cost less to get you home than to keep you here."

"No, I stay with my nephew here. He's willin' I should stay with him till I get my money to go home."

"Yes, but this nephew, can't he get you the money? Doesn't he know,"

she insisted, heatedly, "what it means to you?"

"He's got five children, and not much laid up. And then, he never seen the mountains. He doesn't know what I mean when I try to tell him about gettin' there in time. Why, he says there's many a one living back in the mountains would like to be livin' here. He don't understand--my nephew don't," she added, apologetically.

"Well, _someone_ ought to understand!" broke from the girl. "I understand! But--" she did her best to make it a laugh--"eleven dollars is every cent I've got in the world!"

"Don't!" implored the woman, as the girl gave up trying to control the tears. "Now, don't you be botherin'. I didn't mean to make you feel so bad. My nephew says I ain't reasonable, and maybe I ain't."

The girl raised her head. "But you _are_ reasonable. I tell you, you _are_ reasonable!"

"I must be going back," said the woman, uncertainly. "I'm just making you feel bad, and it won't do no good. And then they may be stirred up about me. Emma--Emma's my nephew's wife--left me at the doctor's office 'cause she had some trading to do, and she was to come back there for me. And then, as I was sittin' there, the pinin'

came over me so strong it seemed I just must get up and start!